666 STATE HORTICULTURAL SOCIETY. 



following cherries: Elton, large pale yellow and red, one of the best; 

 Napoleon, nearly the same color, larger ; May Duke, large dark red; and 

 Governor Wood. 



Luther Palmer of Dexter exhibited the largest strawberries. Jessie, 

 his best yielder, Jewell, Bubach, Belmont. Mr. John Schenk of Ann 

 Arbor town had the largest Haverland, Eureka, Pineapple, and other 

 sorts of strawberry. 



At the August meeting Mr. Ganzhorn, in his interesting paper on the 

 sale of fruit, stated: This is the most important question before fruit- 

 men. I can well remember when the foremost questions were: Which is 

 the best location, what varieties to plant, how to cultivate and prune? 

 Will not the business be overdone? The timid ones were afraid the busi- 

 ness would come to grief, when prices of grapes, shipped from California, 

 dropped to three cents per pound. The wholesale price of grapes, which 

 used to be ten cents per pound, dropped to 1^ cents in the principal mar- 

 kets. I used to ship peck crates of peaches to wholesale houses in Chi- 

 cago for $2. One of my neighbors sold his peaches right under the trees 

 for $8 per bushel. Peach men then said, 10 per cent, is too much for sel- 

 ling fruit, but as the net increase from fruit was so large no attempt was 

 made to reduce the rate of commission. We have now come down to the 

 bedrock of our business, and it has become a question of the survival of 

 the fittest. We can only hope to succeed by trimming away unnecessary 

 expenses. We have made a beginning by breaking away from the express 

 to shipping by freight. Fruit men must combine. It is wasteful to make 

 so many individual and small shipments to one market. In many cases 

 there is a waste in cartage and freight, both in shipping and in return of 

 empty packages. There is as much freight on three empty crates or bask- 

 ets, as on twenty-five. The commission man has to deal and keep accounts 

 with so many small lots, while he would save much clerical service, post- 

 age, and draft expenses had he but one party to deal with from one place, 

 instead of so many. A single fruit-farmer in Illinois sells 100 carloads of 

 fruit for his neighbors. The grape crop of Chautauqua county, between 

 Buffalo and Dunkirk, N. Y., amounting from 1,600 to 2,000 carloads, is sold 

 in charge of one man. Agents are sent out to make sales of carload lots 

 at different places, as Chicago, St. Paul, and even down to Georgia and 

 Texas. Delaware sells her fruits largely by auction. California has devel- 

 oped great skill in grading, packing, and sale of fruits, otherwise their 

 shipment to distant markets would be impossible. We shipped in the 

 neighborhood of 20,000 bushels of peaches last year at an average price of 

 $2 per bushel, the crops amounting to $40,000. The commission on the 

 same is about $4,000; on berries, perhaps $1,000, making a total of $5,000. 

 Although we pay large sums of money every year for the sales of our fruit, 

 we meet with frequent losses for want of better distribution. The com- 

 mission man takes no risk with us; we have to bear all the loss. Against 

 wasteful gluts we can do much ourselves by preparing for canning, evap- 

 orating, manufacture of jellies and fruit syrups. These canned goods 

 can not well be put up by individuals. The factory will be the proper 

 place, where a surplus of fruit can be disposed of on a large scale, and 

 sold to advantage under properly organized facilities. In 1889 we 

 averaged but $2 per bushel for berries. Such seasons will come again, 

 and, in such cases, the saving of unnecessary expenses may be all that 



